DEATH-BED REPENTANCE

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 14, 1860

DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.

I HAVE come to the conclusion that it is best to be decided, as far as the denunciation of this subject is concerned.

I cannot believe that it is a frequent occurrence that one is truly converted at the close of life, for the following reasons:—

1. It is contrary to all the plans of God's providence in life. The design of God is to try men for eternity in this life, and that they may mature a character for eternity. Now if a man who has been tried, and has matured a wrong character, by a death-bed repentance can slip off his character so very easily and enter heaven, it is clear that it contravenes the law of God's usual providence. Now God does not often break his own laws; and hence it is clear that men cannot often thus repent, for they are beyond it when about to go to that world for which their character is already decided.

The Bible tells us of thousands of conversions, and only one or two who were saved when about to die. And these (that one or two) were not those who had often heard the gospel, but those, who, when about to die, heard and embraced it at once. So I cannot conclude that the repentance of those who have often heard the gospel is worth a straw; while I may hope that he who never heard a word about repentance and faith in Christ, until on his death bed, may repent. Now the latter case I may never meet, so it is not probable I shall ever witness, or ever have seen a genuine death-bed repentance.

2. Most of the supposed cases of death-bed repentance will not bear scrutiny, for they are not built on Christ. I have seen what is called sorrow, and forsaking of sin, and resignation; but in all these cases it was the forced admission and the compelled quietude which deceived. So of all reference to Christ, it was apparently because they could not deny his name and be saved, and not the leaping of a pious heart to one loved in and of himself. So that from this time forth I must deem them all false; while I deny not the power and truth of a few, very few cases indeed, on the whole globe since the Christian Era.

I might add the influence of pain and derangement, lassitude and medicine, want of reflection, and all the other concomitants, as well as the fact that the Bible has no promise, except by implication, to the eleventh hour of sickness, did I need further confirmation.—The Old parsonage.